A crisis meeting was convened last Friday afternoon between ICBF and the Pedigree Breeders Council (PBC), which is the umbrella body for pedigree breed societies.

Reports from the meeting said that the discussion was heated, and ended in breed societies calling on ICBF to delay the introduction of the proposed changes by six months.

This was to allow breed societies to communicate the changes to their breeders and make sure everybody understood why the changes were coming in.

ICBF moved this week to delay the introduction of the changes by one week, which has frustrated some farmers even more.

A spokesperson for the PBC said: “The Pedigree Breeders Council is deeply disappointed with the response of the ICBF board in relation to delaying the introduction of the proposed changes to the indexes evaluations.

"A one-week delay is too little time to evaluate the impact the changes will have on the suckler sector, particularly when you take into consideration that we are now one week out from the planned changes – and still, we have not received from ICBF any indication how the changes will affect the existing suckler herd.

“We are particularly disappointed with the silence from the farmer representatives on the ICBF board, who are meant to represent the interest of all livestock farmers” they said.